Luton Audioguides

For three hundred years, Luton made hats. The straw plait trade started in the seventeenth century, grew into a mechanised industry by the Victorian era, and by the 1930s the city was producing hats at a scale that put the word 'Luton' into every milliner's vocabulary across Europe. Luton Town FC adopted the 'Hatters' nickname as early as 1885, and it has never left. The industry is gone, Vauxhall Motors which replaced it has also largely gone after closing its manufacturing plant in 2002, but the hat identity has outlasted them both.

Wardown Park Museum on the northern edge of the town centre holds the most concentrated collection of Bedfordshire lace and hat-making artefacts in existence.

The house itself, a Victorian mansion beside the River Lea, was used as a military hospital in the First World War. Luton Hoo, a Grade I listed country house designed by Robert Adam in the eighteenth century, sits on the southern edge of the town. The grounds were landscaped by Capability Brown and the house has been used as a film location for everything from period dramas to spy films.